Sometimes it takes great inspiration to come up with an innovative new gaming mechanic, but I think it takes just as much imagination to think about removing one.
Let's take the example of grenades in first-person-shooters. Sure, they've been included in every realistic shooter since the dawn of simulated parabolic physics, but they began working their way into non-realistic games as a mechanic for reasons that I can barely fathom.
Halo 3 doesn't need grenades, and all too often they lead to frantic throwing of said weapons when a player's in trouble, throwing randomly around corners when there's a blip on the radar, and generally getting in the way of the fun of the game. I'd like to highlight the random nature of both cases here, because that's precisely what they lead to in an unrealistic game like Halo 3 - randomness.
Everyone loves it when they manage to stick a plasma grenade, but that's not what usually happens and it's more or less by chance most of the time anyway. Grenades make the multiplayer aspect of the game far less enjoyable for me, but maybe because I'm a multiplayer FPS veteran, hailing from the days of Unreal Tournament, where it was all about the action, the dodging and the shooting. Imagine that, in an FPS. Perhaps there should be a new genre - First Person Grenade Throwing.
Hats off to the designers of Team Fortress 2, who actually realised this during their development process. Listen to the developer commentaries and you'll see what I mean. It truly does take some real thought about gameplay to make the difficult decision to remove popular mechanics in order to ensure things are fun again, so well done I say.
Well done.
1 comment:
I do think that Team Fortress 2 has been fantastically balanced, to the point where it is sometimes frustrating (though that's completely down to the other player(s) getting the upper hand, and generally being quicker, better and luckier).
I think the point you made about communicating and working with another person or other people is a much easier and successful way of playing, and you don't really realise that until you play the game on your own amongst a bunch of people who aren't cooperating.
It has been a blast playing it with you, and whilst there isn't a lot of variation amongst the maps and game types, I can see myself enjoying it for a long time.
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